Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(23)

“That’s fascinating,” she said softly. Strange that such a rugged, bold man could feel the delicacies of the universe so acutely.

“Why didn’t you finish your residency after graduating?” Lin wondered as the bartender put place settings, Lin’s salad, and Kam’s milk shake in front of them.

“My mother got ill.”

“She lived at Aurore Manor, didn’t she?” Lin asked.

He nodded. “She worked there. She grew up in an orphanage in Dublin. After she signed up for a maid employment service, she was transferred to Aurore from Ireland. I think she considered herself a temporary Irish visitor until the day she died, even though she lived in northern France for twenty-seven years of her life. She never really mastered the French language, even after all that time,” he explained with a small smile.

She watched as he lifted the long silver spoon from his shake and ladled some of the thick, white liquid between his lips. He slipped it out. The frost on the chilled spoon vanished in a second by the heat of his mouth. She blinked, mesmerized by the sight. “My father seduced her when she was nineteen,” Kam continued bluntly, “got her pregnant with me, and probably never said a dozen words to her between then and the time he died.”

Lin took a sip of water. He’d sounded brutally honest about his father’s crimes. What a strange, lonely existence Kam Reardon must have lived growing up on the grounds of his twisted father’s home.

“But Trevor Gaines spoke to you,” she said softly after a moment, studying his profile. “He taught you what he knew about machines and computers and watches.”

“Yeah. He spoke to me. He allowed me to live on the estate and eat his food and work my ass off for him. When I was eight, I begged him to send me to the public school in the village. He permitted it because he thought the basic knowledge of mathematics might make me a better assistant in his laboratory, and he didn’t have the interest in teaching me myself. When I got older, I bargained with the knowledge of how to improve a couple of his inventions. He sent me to college in exchange for the information, and then resented me ever after for surpassing his mechanical abilities. I guess all that makes him Father of the Year,” Kam said with a dark sideways glance.

She inhaled slowly, trying to dissipate the ache in her chest. “I’m sorry, Kam. Was . . . it better getting that grudging attention from him? Or would you have rather been like Lucien and Ian?”

“Lucien and Ian were better off shot of him altogether. Best thing Gaines ever did for them, ignoring them the way he did,” Kam muttered viciously. He inhaled when he noticed her startled expression.

Not wanting to say something when words would never suffice or make him think she couldn’t handle what he’d said, she picked up her fork and mixed her dressing onto her salad. Neither of them spoke for a charged moment.

“Living in the vicinity of Trevor Gaines was like living near a perpetually broken machine,” he said in a subdued tone after a pause, staring straight ahead. “It almost drove me mad to be near him, like living with a relentless clunk and bang, a grinding on my bones, just from his damn presence. At one point, he requested that I live up at the manor with him. My mother insisted I go—she lived in some kind of dreamworld when it came to him and me—so I went. He had me dressed up like Little Lord Fauntleroy and tried to teach me to be a gentleman,” Kam recalled with simmering sarcasm. “But I knew who he really was. What he really was. Who better than me, after what he’d done to my mother? Filthy f*cking hypocrite,” he seethed under his breath. “I finally lost it and told him what he could do with his social graces. No,” he concluded darkly. “Ian and Lucien were lucky to never have laid eyes on the bastard.”

Lin didn’t flinch at his sudden flash of savageness. His snarl faded slowly as he seemed to come to himself. They both watched in silence as the bartender set the remainder of Kam’s meal in front of him.

“Sorry,” he said dully after the bartender left.

“You don’t have to apologize. There’s nothing shocking about your anger toward him. It’s very understandable.”

“Are you worried about tonight?” he asked warily after several silent moments of eating.

She glanced aside, surprised. “No. Are you worried?”

He swallowed and shook his head.

“Just be yourself, Kam,” she said quietly.

“I thought that was what you were trying to help me avoid,” he said before he took a swift bite of fork-tender ribs.

“You’re wrong. I wouldn’t want you to be anything but yourself.” She searched for a way to ease his anxiety, grabbing on a thread of advice. “Just talk to people like you do me,” she suggested.

A strange expression came over his rugged features. He set down his fork and knife and took a swallow of ice water.

“What?” Lin asked warily.

He leaned closer until their mouths were only inches apart.

“We’re screwed,” he said, his warm breath brushing her lips.

“What do you mean?”

“I hardly talk to people as a rule. At least not for the past few years.”

“And?” she whispered cautiously, caught in the gleam of his shadowed eyes.

“I’ve said more words to you in the past twenty-four hours than I have to people I’ve known my whole life. I don’t have to think about talking to you. It just . . . happens.”